Quotable: Words Of Wisdom From Our Recent APAC Coverage
Executive Summary
Scrip's APAC team selects notable quotes from recent interviews, conferences and other coverage to highlight the views of senior executives and officials on the major topics facing the biopharma sector in the region.
During the course of conducting interviews, attending conferences and providing other coverage across the region, Scrip's on-the-ground team in APAC often hears comments and views that are worth highlighting by themselves, valuable for the insights and perspectives they provide from those on the front lines on key topics of interest to the biopharma industry.
Below, we have selected the most notable recent quotes from CEOs, other senior executives and regulatory officials that you may have missed in our coverage over the past few months, along with a link to the wider story in which they originally appeared.
Perhaps not surprisingly, AI emerges as a hot topic, along with research productivity, a long-running central topic for the biopharma industry.
Please enjoy this collection of notable quotes selected by our APAC team.
“One of the things that gets lost in the whole discussion around AI and drug discovery is not just how we train our models, but how our models train our humans.” - Diogo Rau, chief information and digital officer, Eli Lilly, on how machines are generating molecules that humans could not have conceived.
Read More: Lilly, BMS, Microsoft On Gen AI’s Machine-First Approach Success, Cell Therapy Use, Regulation
“Innovation comes from people who think differently, who re-imagine solutions to challenging problems, who welcome that diversity of perspectives. So, I wouldn't ask where is the innovation but rather, where are the innovators? They're right here in India.” - Christopher Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb, on India becoming BMS’s largest R&D site outside the US.
Read More: BMS’ Boerner Bets On AI-Driven R&D In India, Points To Potential For MS, Lupus Drugs
“I'm very hopeful of the young generation…they've got another language, a little bit of swagger. They're not bowed down by hierarchy. They want the best guy and idea to win, not the most senior person.” Jonathan Hunt, CEO and managing director, Syngene International, on the promise of the younger generation.
Read More: Adopt Unilever Model, Tech To Prevent India Plus-One Situation – CRDMO/CXOs
“We are entering areas in cancer therapy where the solutions are getting complicated, not because we want them to be, but because it seems simple solutions aren’t the answer”- John Babich, chief scientific officer at radiopharmaceuticals firm Ratio Therapeutics, on the high cost of new modalities for cancer treatment.
Read More: Ratio Therapeutics On BMS Investment, Radiopharma R&D Trends, AI Use
“I think it is time for India to reconsider its position on IP [intellectual property] relative to our industry and enhance its controls providing a more consistent period of reward in-country and supporting those policies out of country” - Eli Lilly CEO, David Ricks, who urged India to rethink certain historical positions in areas like intellectual property rights.
Read More: Lilly CEO: Affordable Generics And IP Support Not Incompatible Ideas
“In Korea, the focus is on platform companies and CDMOs, while the pool of developers of ADC therapeutics and new target/antibody providers is relatively small. This is leading to an imbalance in demand and supply of technology.” – Pinotbio CEO Dooyoung Jung on the South Korean ADC industry’s challenges.
Read More: How Pinotbio Is Helping Build Korea's ADC Ecosystem
“I am confident that this is the case, that for example R&D asset teams are willing to make ‘fail fast’ type decisions, but we always need to encourage the culture where people have courage to make difficult and brave decisions” - Adam Pearson, Astellas’s chief strategy officer, on taking ownership of “putting the moose on the table," especially for an enterprise-wide and medium-term view, though he expects everyone at Astellas to do so as well.
Read More: Astellas CStO Pearson: We’re Not Short Of Opportunities To Compensate for LOEs
“In terms of clinical trial diversity, we are deploying an AI engine that uses RWD about patients living with the disease to create, and adjust as needed, inclusion/exclusion criteria. By tweaking parameters, BMS can significantly increase the likelihood more diverse patients would be eligible” - Greg Meyers, Bristol Myers Squibb’s chief digital and technology officer, on investing in a number of advanced data science approaches to accentuate the company’s clinical program and improve diversity of trials.
Read More: BMS CDTO Meyers On Gen AI Use Cases, Long-Range Planning Models
The proposed BIOSECURE Act “puts a lot of potential stress especially on smaller biotechs, which may be under pressure to find alternate solutions with limited resources and capital.” - Akhil Ravi, CEO at Aurigene Pharmaceutical Services, a subsidiary of India’s Dr. Reddy's Labs.
Read More: Proposed US BIOSECURE Act: Do Lonza, Other CDMOs Gain And How Soon?
“What Yuhan has accomplished so far is quite significant, but I think it is time for the company to jump to a much higher place.” - Yeul Hong Kim, R&D president of Yuhan Corp., on the South Korea pharma’s firm’s global R&D ambitions.
Read More: Toward The Global Big Pharma League: Yuhan’s Ambitions After Leclaza
“There are huge populations of patients with cardiovascular diseases, but few novel drugs have been developed in the past few years.” – Sirius Therapeutics’ CEO Qunsheng Ji on the best therapeutic use he thought of the novel small interfering RNA modality. A siRNA specialist, Sirius is currently focusing on the area of chronic cardiovascular diseases with large patient populations.
Read More: Emerging Company Profile: Chinese siRNA Specialist Sirius All In On Cardiovascular Disease
“INL1 works like repairing a run-down house, while the current standard of care treatments for heart failure only prop it up.” - Michael Chen, chief operating officer at Innolife, on the mechanism of INL1 (trientine HCl), the biotech’s key asset for the treatment of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.
Read More: China’s Innolife Bets On Heart Failure Drug With Novel Mechanism
"The sustainability issue [of antibiotics in a global scale] has been a problem for a very long time...even old antibiotics, like benzylpenicillin, the market has fallen through the floor. And we’re now looking at shortages of old antibiotics. It leads to clinics having to use other antibiotics that they maybe shouldn’t use, which then, also creates more pressure on drug resistance. So we need to fix this issue on a much bigger level than people understand…I’m confident that this can be solved provided the sufficient, public and government support for this issue." - Manica Balasegaram, executive director, Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP), on sustainability issues around antibiotics in the global market.
"Healios was uniquely positioned to identify this value and execute on this transaction because of our close proximity to the situation and the skill set of our team. We would reiterate that this transaction represents an extraordinary capture of value for Healios shareholders, and an unusual achievement for a small cap Japanese company.” - Hardy Kagimoto, CEO, Healios K.K., on the $2.25m acquisition of US venture Athersys by Healios after a long-running partnership.
Read More: Healios Acquires Bankrupt Athersys, Expands Cell Therapy R&D Programs